


Unbinding

by Lila Futuransky (futuransky)



Category: Earthsea - Le Guin
Genre: Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuransky/pseuds/Lila%20Futuransky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tenar knows what it means to be consumed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unbinding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kormantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kormantic/gifts).



> Thanks to were_duck for beta and encouragement.

The further they recede into the past, the more Tenar dreams of the days when she was Arha. The living darkness of the Undertomb wraps round her like a blanket; she feels her every counted step, past and future, as part of an intricate dance. The line of eaten girls, the line she broke, stretches behind her. Sometimes she thinks herself dead and born nameless into another body, another girl who breathes in fumes and dances for hungry ghosts. Sometimes the lines that bound her life to the other Arhas become the ones that bound the prisoners, starving, and she cries out to Kossil to give her a name. And Kossil refuses, and then sometimes she burns, the walls of the Undertomb glowing around her and the shadows just beyond, reaching in to take what's theirs.

That's when she wakes up crying out, and crying reaches for her name and knows it, holds it to her heart. That's when she goes to the child's room and watches her shift in sleep. Therru curls in on herself, trembles in silence. She's been eaten, too; there are bound and burning places within her she will never leave behind. But like Tenar, she won't give others to the emptiness. The girl has a name.


End file.
